Harmony (8 page)
Cian frowned, not understanding. “So you’re not going home?”
“Probably not.”
Cian stepped in front of me. “Then let’s go get something to eat, at least. There’s this new building near where I live. It looks all bumpy and white from the outside, like it was made out of solid plaster. But when you go inside, you can see out. It’s this new intelligent material, a special light-refracting Styrofoam glass.”
“Sounds pleasant. I’m really not in the mood.”
“We could eat, and then you can come over to my house. It’s only eleven o’clock. How about lunch?”
I had an urge to check with the nonexistent Miach.
“Want to go with me and Cian to get some lunch?”
I sighed and told her I’d go with her to lunch. Only lunch. I followed after Cian, getting into the first bean-shaped light yellow train that came sliding down the tracks. My WatchMe linked to my credit account, deducting the appropriate rail fee. I was just realizing how long it had been since I rode the subway in Japan when I looked around at the other passengers and felt a sudden fear grip me.
They were all the same. Everyone.
It hadn’t been so blatantly apparent on the battlefield. Working with an international group meant there were a lot of people from a lot of different places and races around all the time, and more than a few of them were indulging on the sly, like me.
That was definitely not the case here.
For the first time, I realized how bizarre a sight the medically standardized Japanese populace presented. The difference between the couple sitting in the seats nearest to me was no more than the difference between mannequin A and mannequin B. Neither was too fat nor too skinny. Every person on the train conformed to a particular body type. Everyone fit within a healthy target margin. I felt like a stranger in a house of mirrors—a country of mirrors.
How had things come to this? How could everyone be the same when simple genetics told us everyone was different?
The more rigid and narrower the goal, the easier it will be for the weak to achieve.
Miach’s phantom again, whispering in my ear. Talking just like she always did when giving us a lecture. I remembered her saying how human will could grow rigid even while it succumbed to temptation.
Humans were like a broken meter whose needle swung back and forth between desire and willpower, always all or nothing, never lingering in between. There was no room for moderation. Even a pigeon had a will of its own. Volition just happened to be a good fit for vertebrates, which was why our brains kept it around.
“Is something wrong? Do you feel unwell? Here, take my seat,” a woman offered, seeing the momentary fear caused by social panic flash across my face. My AR told me that she was a politician—a coordinator or commissioner for an admedistration somewhere—though her face looked no different from anyone else’s. She too was well within the margins. A healthy, standardized face. It was a feature—that is, the lack of distinct features—I assumed you would find even more the higher up you got in the chain of command. I remembered everyone at Geneva headquarters looking more or less the same.
“I’m okay,” I told the politician and went a short distance down the train car. Cian caught up to me, a worried look on her face.
“You shouldn’t have walked away like that. It’s rude. She’s an admedistration councilor somewhere.”
“I know. I saw the AR. Sorry.”
“I think you’re just exhausted from work, Tuan. It must be hard, doing all that. But you’re really making a contribution to society.”
Me, making a contribution to society.
Making a contribution by going to a battlefield where I could smoke.
Making a contribution by consciously choosing not to be part of society—where I undoubtedly would have either slashed my own wrists or cut into someone else a long time ago.
Which was how I was able to agree with Cian, without a trace of sarcasm, that I was indeed making a great contribution to society.
My path and Cian’s had diverged sharply after Miach’s death. For Cian, all the enmity she had felt toward society, her family, her hometown, and school had passed. For her it was like a rite of passage, a phase everyone went through before returning to a standardized life. For me, I had gone on collecting the knowledge I surely would have gotten from Miach were she still alive, and on the surface, I too appeared to be conforming, just like Cian. My grades kept climbing until I took Miach’s former place at the head of the class. In a sense, I
had
become Miach’s doppelgänger.I was becoming Miach Mihie.
Cian wasn’t becoming Miach. She was joining a club—a club at least nine out of ten Japanese belonged to. A club with tightly defined body fat ratios and stable immune systems and known RNA transcription error rates.
All while I went from party zone to party zone. Battlefield to battlefield.
From airport to airport.
Cigar to cigar.
Bottle to bottle.
Except this time, I’d gone from Château Petrus to
insalata di caprese
, in a place where there was little likelihood of seeing a single smoke or drink.
I had said goodbye to the depressing, dizzying subway and now sat enjoying a healthy meal in an Italian restaurant with my old friend.
There were slices of tomato burying water buffalo cheese that had been completely drained of fat, with a light sprinkling of olive oil on top. We were on the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building. The meals here were noteworthy for each bearing a slight risk to the diner.
When you ordered a plate, the menu displayed your total calorie intake and any potential risk of chromosomal damage you might suffer from consuming the food. Every single item on the menu had a warning attached. Once you had read the risk information to your satisfaction, you could order what you wanted to eat, within the prescribed limits set for you by the health consultant on contract with your admedistration.
There were a few other people in the restaurant, but not too many. Everyone sitting around the marigold tablecloths were just like the people I had seen in the subway, each well within the margins of a healthy Japanese body.
“It’s been a long time since we ate together,” Cian said, watching the server arrange our
insalata
. It occurred to me that since the day we had both tried to throw our lives away and failed, Cian and I hadn’t eaten together once.
“No kidding.”
“It’s a little strange, actually, being here with just the two of us.”
I looked out the window at the view from the sixtysecond floor.
The view that Miach wanted to mar.
The view that Cian had gotten used to.
The view I had escaped from.
“Actually, I think this might be the first time we’ve ever eaten together without Miach. Just the two of us, I mean.”
“I think I ate alone with Miach a few times,” I said, “ before she brought you into things.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. You were friends before I met you, weren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t call us friends. We didn’t find each other. Miach pretty much grabbed me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was walking along one day and she literally ran up and grabbed me. Remember the story about the jungle gym?”
“Oh, right.”
“Wasn’t it pretty much the same way with you, Cian? With me she asked me whether I knew why the jungle gym twisted and warped like it did.”
“Maybe she was casting a net.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, she was sitting in the park reading a book, right? Maybe she was waiting for someone to notice her? A girl like me or you.”
Miach, waiting for someone to notice her? Something about it didn’t fit with the image I had. Miach hated everything about healthy society. She hated how everyone worried about everyone else, offering help whether it was asked for or not. It didn’t make sense for her to want out of the system and then go looking for friends. I told Cian I didn’t agree.
“Huh? Why?”
“I just think you’re wrong about her. Miach wasn’t looking for friends, she was looking for kindred spirits—comrades in arms.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not really. They’re both kinds of acquaintances, in a loose sense of the term, but the bond between kindred spirits isn’t friendship
per se
. It’s more like the bond between fellow soldiers.”
Picking up knife and fork, I cut off a bite-sized chunk from my
insalata
. Cian was looking at me, clearly trying to comprehend what I was saying and just as clearly failing.
“See, Miach didn’t want friendship,” I continued. “She wanted someone to fight by her side. You can’t fight a war alone, you know.”
“The more the merrier?”
“You bet. Of course, it’d be a lot easier if she could find someone who already shared a lot of the feelings she had about things. So you’re right in that she was lying in wait for us, just for a slightly different reason.”
“We weren’t really the soldiers she hoped we would be, were we, then. At least, I wasn’t.”
Cian was probably right. Miach clearly identified the enemy and charged ahead all by herself. We were basically no better than deserters.
If Miach had been saved as we had been, would she be sitting here today, eating lunch with us? Would she have a smile for her former soldiers who fled the front lines? I had no idea.
It was then that I noticed Cian looking at her plate with a strangely expressionless face. It was bizarre. Like her plate was a pool, and she was watching something swim at the bottom. Her eyes remained fixed on one spot, unmoving. I was about to ask what was wrong when Cian opened her mouth, her eyes still fixed on her
caprese
.
“I’m sorry, Miach,” she whispered, then suddenly, her table knife was in her hand. Before I had time to wonder what she was doing, Cian had thrust the tip of the knife into her own throat.
“Ehgu,” said a strange voice from Cian’s mouth.
Summoning some strength I never would have imagined to be in her, she twisted the table knife inside her throat and brought it straight through her carotid artery and out one side. The knife couldn’t have been that sharp. Her strength was unbelievable. It was as if her neck had been a tree trunk, and she had cut halfway through it with one blow of a hatchet.
Blood sprayed from her neck.
The blood splattered all over the interior of the Italian restaurant on the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building, painting the walls in patches of somber red. A shower of blood caught the server—who had just been coming to our table to fill our water glasses—directly in the face. He passed out.
It all happened in a single, endless moment. All I could do was stare. Blood flowed down onto her plate, mingling, but not blending with, the olive oil dripping down from her salad.
The other customers began to scream.
Just as, at that very moment, similar screams rose up across the globe.
Because, at that very same time, by a number of various means, 6,582 other people also tried to take their own lives.
